Tag: persevere
Lightly Child. Lightly.
I hit a low point today. I felt I could not go on. It was like knowing that a free garden, calm and full of rest, lay on the other side of a wall. I knew where the gate was, I could walk through it whenever I felt like it. I was withholding release from myself. Then I had a coffee and a cake, went back to the desk, forced a solution, and kept going.
— Helen Garner, One Day I’ll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995
- Portrait via Inside Story. “Garner Territory” by Zora Simic: “In one of the most remarkable entries, in the thick of torment, Garner envisions a new life for herself… “Sometimes we know what we want even when we think we want something else.” Another friend declares, “I think these diaries are the best thing she’s ever written.” I agree; they are her life’s work, and the ideal mode for a “writer who works off and is nourished by the events of daily life.” •
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
T.G.I.F.: Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:30 am, March 5, 2021. 24° F, feels like 13° F, wind gusts up to 27 mph. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
- Post title: Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.: “Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.” (Via Make Believe Boutique)
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
What is it we’re supposed to make of life? There is so much suffering–my own is a tiny stitch in a vast tapestry and many, many people suffer so much more than I have. What is it that keeps rising up in us even when we feel crushed? What keeps putting one foot in front of the other, or looks at the vague blue smudge of a sloe bush and is reminded of a truth that doesn’t even have a name? What is that? It isn’t me. It isn’t me that gets me up this hill each morning, but rather an irrepressibility that must be called life, life itself, a force working independently of my brain, body and mind. I don’t know what it is… What is it that is leaning forward in me now, towards the world? … What is it that dares to want to get back down this hill and go home and write? Or that wants to find out why things in nature are rarely blue. What is it that triggers the synapses that call to the muscles to work the body and keep going on? What is it that still insists on being happy? What is it that refuses the call of defeat?
— Samantha Harvey, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping (Grove Press; May 12, 2020)
Book Review in The Guardian: “The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey review – a good night’s sleep? In her dreams“
It’s been a long day
It is not always clear
these days whether between here and there,
I am supposed to break or
hold the line.
– Cynthia Dewi Oka, from “Elegy with a White Shirt”
Notes:
- Sources – Photo: (via See More). Poem: via violentwavesofemotion)
- Related Posts: It’s been a long day